Uniform Crime Reporting tables are out!
For those that are curious about such things, the FBI UCR ("Uniform Crime Reporting") tables for 2020 are out. For those with a macabre interest in how Americans killed each other in 2020, here are the top 10:
Handguns .............. 8,017*
Knives ....................... 1732
Hands, fists, feet ... 657
Rifles ........................... 454*
Blunt Objects .......... 392
Shotguns ................... 203*
Drugs .......................... 113
Fire ............................... 106
Smothering ............... 71
Strangulation ........... 58
*In the firearms category, there are an additional 4832 homicides where the type of firearm was not stated. If we distribute those unknown firearms according to the same ratio of murder weapons where the type of firearm is known, we get:
Handguns .............. 12,485
Rifles ............................... 707
Shotguns ...................... 316
When discussing homicide weapon statistics, these numbers with the "unknown type of firearm" proportionally distributed to the categories we know are probably the more intellectually honest numbers to use, so long as one provides the footnote concerning the distribution.
For most of my readers here who would never contemplate using a weapon against a person, it's useful to note that 1 or 2 Americans are killed every day with "hands, fist, feet". The idea that a fist-fight is just some form of rough-housing (as opposed to life-threateningly dangerous) comes to us from watching Hollywood movies where people beat the hell out of each other, get up, and walk away.
Life is not a television show. Don't hit people.